History

It all started when…

Instruction and meetings had been occurring since 1945, but the first formal meeting of the Hat Art Club (then known as Medicine Hat Community Art Club) occurred on January 13, 1946. The club’s founders, Mrs. Helen Beny Gibson and Rev. L.T.H. Pearson had both attended art classes at Banff School of Fine Arts and agreed art instruction was something the cultural scene of Medicine Hat needed.

Through gathering the support of 30 like-minded people and pooling their resources and organizational skills, they secured teachers of art and gained support to use the City Council chambers for their lessons. (1)

Improving their technique, organizing their own exhibitions, and submitting art in shows all over Alberta led both talented individual members and the group to notoriety. The values of providing high-quality teaching locally and supporting one other’s artistic development allowed the club and others like it in the province to flourish. Called “the Community Art School Project in Alberta” by Banff School of Fine Art’s director Donald Cameron, then on a visit to Medicine Hat in 1950, the movement to enhance the lives of Albertans through art led the club to expand into offering art classes for children and art therapy in community available classes. (2)

So integral to the cultural life of Medicine Hat had instruction and exhibitions become that City Council approved the budget to alter Council Chambers for development and exhibition for their work. (3)

As the club thrived, tensions with the work of Council occurred. Lessons were temporarily moved into space at the Nurses Residence of Medicine Hat Hospital and later to Eagle Hall. (4, 5) Artist members started the advocacy process to bring a Cultural Centre into being as early as 1967. (6)

The Art Club underwent a change of name when it became a formal society, ‘rebranding’ itself as the Hat Art Club with a new logo and a grand exhibition called “the Celebration of ’76” where they showcased their work along other newly minted clubs as the capacity for working in different mediums (fibre arts and pottery) were pursued. In her address “A Saga of Art”, the now Alderman Helen Beny Gibson made reference to the ongoing struggle for this creativity to find a home in “[a] Civic Cultural Centre”. (7)

Working together consistently to support this vision, arts and culture advocates along with Medicine Hat College opened the Cultural Centre in 1983. Hat Art Club has been resident in the Art Room created for that purpose since then. (8)

Sources

1. Gordon, Patricia. “The First Twenty Years of the Medicine Hat Community Art Club”. Illustration: Anne Willoughby Shepherd. Esplanade Archives, March 16, 1965.

2. op cit. Hat Art Club Webpage, “History” Accessed Aug.21 st , 2020. p.3

3. op cit. p.4

4. Wilson-Borella, Charlie. Phone interview with Leona Mitzner. Aug. 11 th , 2020.

5. Fix, Loretta, email, sent September 2 nd , 2020.

6. Wilson-Borella, Charlie. Interview Allan Jensen. Sept.8 th , 2017.

7. Gibson, Helen Beny. “A Saga of Art”. Address delivered April 9, 1976. p.6, paragraph 3.

8. Wilson-Borella, Charlie. Phone interview with Leona Mitzner. Aug. 11 th , 2020.